Seeking Suggestions: How to Improve Low Morale in Company

[little__cee]

I am not sure where to post this!

I am looking for examples of a company that had concerns about low morale and what they did to successfully tackle their problems. I have googled this to no avail. I've searched college textbooks for case studies with no luck. If you don't feel comfortable sharing on the board, please email me. You can remove all references to your company name if you like.

We have been discussing morale and motivation a great deal here. There are tons of articles on the internet about how to motivate, what motivates people, etc, etc, but I have yet to find something regarding a company that had low morale and how they overcame that problem. Specifically I'd love to find an example that starts back at the beginning and details what the company did first, second, third, etc. Or a synopsis of what they did, what they should have done, what they wished they did not do, etc.

I am posting on this forum because I feel this is my best resource for input and I thank you in advance for your help.

 

[barbt]

My first suggestion is that you find out what is causing low moral in your organization; we found that a professionally designed employee satisfaction questionnaire was usefull for this. It isolated not just what was wrong, but what was right as well. From there, we targetted one or two 'improvement areas' and are concentrating on making positive changes in those areas through specific training.

Not surprisingly, key findings were that management and shop personell have very different views of the organization, that communication between management and shop needs great improvements. People also want to be treated fairly, and be recognized for a job well done.

Your first step has to be to determine what the underlying issues for low moral are. - Then proceed from there.

Good luck,
Barb

 

[Kevin Mader]

Little Cee,

Do a browse for this article: "One more time: How do you motivate employees?" by Frederick Herzberg in the Jan-Feb 1968 Harvard Business Review Issue #68108.

You should get many hits on this and the topic for weeks worth of reading. Also do a search here on the topic of Motivation. We've discussed it plenty and there is a ton of information here for you. Just the same, I'm always happy to return to the topic of Motivation to discuss it some more.

I think that if you start with Herzberg's article, you'll gain an understanding to what causes motivation and what causes movement. Particularly, the distinction made between Hygienic and Motivational factors. This would make the common Employee Satisfaction survey’s more complete in their creation, administration, and analysis.

We’re here to help.

Regards,

Kevin

 

[Mike S.]

I am not sure where to post this!

I have yet to find something regarding a company that had low morale and how they overcame that problem. Specifically I'd love to find an example that starts back at the beginning and details what the company did first, second, third, etc. Or a synopsis of what they did, what they should have done, what they wished they did not do, etc.

I am going by a quite fallible memory here, so I might be wrong, but I think I read such a story as you seek about the Plow and Hearth company back in about 1998-2000 timeframe. Might try a search there. I think what I read was written by the company.